IB HL Lang/Lit Year 1: Poetic Devices and Terminology

Vocabulary practice flashcards defining all 54 poetic devices and literary terms covered in IB HL Language and Literature Year 1.

Alliteration

The repetition of identical or similar consonant sounds, normally at the beginnings of words.

Allusion

A brief, intentional reference to a historical, mythic, or literary person, place, event, or movement.

Ambiguity

A word, phrase, or statement containing more than one meaning, referring to the openness of language to different interpretations.

Antithesis

A figure of speech characterized by strongly contrasting words, clauses, sentences, or ideas, balancing one term against another for emphasis or stylistic effectiveness.

Cacophony

A term that describes words that are harsh sounding.

Canto

A section or division of a long poem, functioning like a chapter of a long poem.

Caesura

A pause, usually near the middle of a line of verse, often created by punctuation and often greater than the normal pause.

Conceit

An extended metaphor with a complex logic that governs a poetic passage or entire poem, inviting the reader into a more sophisticated understanding by manipulating images and ideas in surprising ways.

Connotation

The cultural or emotional meaning of a word; the suggesting of a meaning apart from the thing it explicitly names or describes.

Denotation

The dictionary definition of a word.

Diction

The use of specific word choice in a literary work, which may be categorized as formal, informal, colloquial, or slang.

Didactic poem

A poem that is intended primarily to teach a lesson.

Ekphrasis

A poem based on a picture or work of art.

Elegy

A sustained and formal poem setting forth the poet’s meditations upon death or another solemn theme.

Em dash

A punctuation mark (—) that is longer than a hyphen and en dash, used to replace commas, parentheses, colons, and semicolons to draw attention to information in a striking or interruptive manner.

End-stopped

A poetic line with a pause at the end, terminating with punctuation such as a period, comma, colon, semicolon, exclamation point, or question mark.

Enjambment

The running-over of a sentence or phrase from one poetic line to the next.

Envelope / Envelope verse

A structural device in poetry where a line or stanza is repeated identically or with little variation to enclose the rest or part of the poem between its two appearances.

Epigraph

A quotation on the title page of a book, a motto heading a section of a work, a chapter title, or a part of a poem that frequently encapsulates theme or serves as inspiration.

Euphony

A term that describes words that are pleasant sounding and melodious.

Extended metaphor

An implied analogy or comparison that is carried throughout a stanza or an entire poem.

Fixed form poem

A poem categorized by the pattern of its lines, meter, rhythm, or stanzas, such as a sonnet, limerick, sestina, or villanelle.

Free form / Free verse poem

Poetry composed of nonmetrical, non-rhyming lines that closely follow the natural rhythms of speech without adhering to a metrical plan.

Hyperbole

A deliberate, extravagant, and often outrageous exaggeration used for either serious or comic effect.

Idiom

A short expression peculiar to a language, people, or place that conveys a figurative meaning without a literal interpretation of the words used.

Imagery

Language that appeals to the five senses, including visual (sight), auditory (sound), tactile (touch), olfactory (smell), and gustatory (taste).

Intertextuality

The way that one text influences another through direct borrowing (such as quotation) or indirect methods (such as parody, pastiche, or allusion).

Irony

The contrast between the actual meaning and the suggestion of another meaning; differs from sarcasm by usually being lighter and less harsh in wording while indirect.

Line break

A poetic device used at the end of a line and beginning of the next to divide a line into two halves; can create enjambment when occurring mid-clause.

Lyric / Lyrical poem

Any short poem that presents a single speaker who expresses personal thoughts and feelings.

Metaphor

A figurative use of language in which a comparison is expressed without the use of a comparative term like "as," "like," or "than."

Metonymy

A form of metaphor in which a word closely associated with something is used in place of the actual word.

Mixed metaphors

The mingling of one metaphor with another immediately following with which the first is incongruous.

Mood

The atmosphere or feeling created in a work of literature by the author.

Narrative poem

A poem that tells a story or presents a narrative, whether simple or complex, long or short, such as an epic or a ballad.

Onomatopoeia

The use of words whose sound suggests their meaning, such as "buzz," "hiss," or "honk."

Oxymoron

A form of paradox that combines a pair of contrary terms into a single expression, usually serving to shock the reader into awareness.

Pantoum

A structured poem comprising quatrains where lines 2 and 4 of each quatrain repeat as lines 1 and 3 of the next, and lines 2 and 4 of the final stanza repeat lines 1 and 3 of the first stanza.

Paradox

A situation, action, or feeling that appears to be contradictory but on inspection turns out to be true or at least make sense.

Parallelism

A similar grammatical structure within a line or lines of poetry, used when expressing ideas of equal worth with the same grammatical form.

Personification

Giving inanimate objects or abstract ideas human characteristics.

Pun

A play on words that are identical or similar in sound but have sharply diverse meanings.

Refrain

A specific form of repetition where a group of words forming a phrase or sentence of one or more lines is repeated at intervals, usually at the end of a stanza.

Repetition

Repeating a word, phrase, or sentence within a single line, stanza, or poem as a rhetorical technique to add emphasis, unity, and/or power.

Sibilance

A literary device in which hissing or hushing sounds known as "sibilants" ("s", "z", "sh", "zh") are repeated in a line or sentence.

Simile

A directly expressed comparison between two objects, usually using "like," "as," or "than."

Stanza

A division or unit of a poem (the "paragraph of poetry"), usually consisting of a repeated grouping of three or more lines with the same meter and rhyme scheme.

Structure

The arrangement of materials within a work, the relationship of parts to the whole, or the logical divisions of a work, most commonly the line and stanza.

Symbol

Something that is simultaneously itself and a sign of something else.

Synecdoche

A form of metaphor which in mentioning a part signifies the whole.

Synesthesia

Figurative language in poetry that includes a mixing or blending of the senses.

Syntax

The ordering of words into patterns or sentences.

Tone

The manner in which an author or speaker expresses their attitude, or the intonation of the voice that expresses meaning.

Understatement

The opposite of hyperbole; a kind of irony that deliberately represents something as being much less than it really is.